Friday, September 30, 2011

A man got beaten up and a woman brandished a shotgun during a melee in the Blue Rock Inn bar parking lot early Thursday, police said.

A 22-year-old Vallejo resident told officers he was outside the bar, in the 200 block of Springs Road, smoking a cigarette when a suspect punched him in the nose and grabbed his necklace, Sgt. Herman Robinson said.

Two other suspects struck the victim from behind, and the victim's female cousin tried to help him, Robinson said. A witness said the three suspects fled in a silver Hyundai Access and drove south on Oakwood Avenue.

Witnesses said a woman, described as a 50-year-old with long blond hair, brandished a gun at the victim while standing next to a small car, Robinson said. No arrests were made.

Not sure why, but I was fascinated by this story. Here we have a guy just trying to enjoy a smoke outside the Blue Rock Inn when he gets punched in the nose! And somebody tries to steal his necklace! Actually, judging from the looks of the Blue Rock Inn, I can't say I'm 100% surprised by this battery/attempted larceny incident.

this was my last bar on my 21st b-day and it was really nice and calm no beer from the tap but overall really comfortable and they also let you smoke in here the bartender was really nice. i had spilled my beer ( lol i as kinda drunk by the time i got here) and she was very kind and cleaned it up i did tip her ok lol they only have one pool table and there is a much older crowd in here but overall good spot to hang out if u wanna smoke.

Wait a minute. If they let you smoke in there, what was 22-year-old Vallejo resident doing in the parking lot? Hmmm, maybe there's more to this story.

ANYWAY. We're getting off-track. This necklace must be made out of pure diamonds or something because it took a concerted effort by three people to get it. And one of them, who we'll call "Wanda" because she seems like a Wanda, was a 50-year-old woman with long blonde hair toting a MOTHERFUCKING SHOTGUN. Damn, Wanda!

Google Image Search result for "50-year-old woman." Is this our suspect? PERHAPS!

I'm picturing Wanda with a Benson & Hedges 120 dangling from her lips, telling her younger crime partners to "kiss her ass" if they disagree with her. And yet Wanda can be sweet as hell. She calls you "darlin'" and totally fed that homeless Mom and her kids for free one night at the diner where she waits tables four nights a week.

The story doesn't say whether Wanda et al. got away with the necklace. Anyway, next time you're in Vallejo, keep your eyes peeled for a 50-year-old woman with long blonde hair driving a Hyundai Access. Your necklace: she wants it.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've managed to mostly avoid bar fights (or fights in general) during my many dissolute years of bar-going. Honestly, that shit is stupid and I fail to understand why someone looking at your girl would provoke a violent outrage, but I guess some assholes just want to get into fights and need an excuse.

I can only think of a handful of times when I've even been close to getting in a fight, like:

- A couple of weeks after I made the catastrophically bad decision to move to Santa Cruz, one of the Worst Places on Earth, I was playing pool in this dive called the 1007 Club. I hadn't noticed that more people had come in and someone had written his name on the chalkboard to play next game. I started to put quarters in and the guy totally got in my face and was screaming about how he was next and I was like "Fine, whatever, you're next." Looking back now, I realize that he was probably tweaked out of his fucking gourd on meth, like 90% of everyone between the ages of 19 and 29 in that Godforsaken shithole.

- One weekend afternoon I was hanging out at the Columbus Cafe with my ex-wife and drinking and playing the jukebox and shit and this little angry Scotsman started hitting on her right in front of me. He offered to buy her a drink and I said "It's cool, I've got her drinks" and he FUCKING FLIPPED OUT and told me to come outside to settle this and I was like "No, I think I'll pass" and then the bartender kicked him out. The bartender told us the guy works on a ship and comes in whenever they dock in SF and gets into fights.

(Knowing what I know now, I should have let him buy her the drink, then jumped up and pointed and said "A-HA!!! NOW SHE'S YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM!!!" and run out.)

Other times I've been on the periphery of big fights that have started and spilled out into the street. Whatever, that shit is boring.

Bristol Palin was riding the mechanical bull at a Hollywood bar in front of a throng of paparazzi and reality TV cameras, when a rude drunk yelled, "Your mother's a whore!" Bristol marched up to the man, jutted out her new chin, and got into a heated confrontation:

Man: She [your mother] is evil.Bristol: You want her dead?Man: You know what, if there is a hell, and I don't think there is one, she will be there.Bristol: OK, why is that?Man: She's evil. She's evil.Bristol: Is it because you're a homosexual?Man: Pretty much!Bristol: And that's why you hate her?Man: And why do you say I'm a homosexual?Bristol: Because I can tell you are.

On the way out she gets into a fight with another pair of angry drunks, including one who yells, "White trash Wasilla!" and "You fucking bitch!" as Bristol and friends storm out of the bar.

"Is it because you're a homosexual"? Who the fuck talks like that? Although, I gotta say, it's probably a drag when you're out for your usual night on the town being followed by a camera crew and wearing an ugly sweatshirt that says "Empowered" on the front with a Lightning Bolt Cross and some stranger says "Your mother's evil." I guess that would suck.

First, a little backstory. As part of this bitch's quest to monopolize the parking spaces in front of our house, she parks her fucking beat-up hooptie scooter in one of the spaces to occupy it so then she can pull her car into the other half of the space and half in front of her fucking garage. I'm not explaining this right but you get the idea. Basically, her janky scooter is always always always parked in the same space in front of our house. She only moves it for street cleaning. It's basically a traffic cone with a basket.

So yesterday I'm coming home from my workstation and there's a Lexus SUV (annoying, I know, but that's another story) parked in front of the scooter WITH A NOTE ON THE WINDSHIELD. Oh yay. I love a good bitchy note. So I read it and basically it's Bitchy McBitchface accusing the Lexus of knocking over her piece of shit scooter! And she says "I've already reported this to my insurance company"! So I roll my eyes and go inside.

Where I talk to my sister (who is temporarily staying with us after breaking up w/ her bf, but that's a whole other story) who's just as nosy as I am and constantly watches the Outdoor Activity like I do and SHE SAW THE WHOLE THING GO DOWN. And guess what? LEXUS SUV HAS BEEN FALSELY ACCUSED. Sister says that Lexus parked and like an hour later the scooter topples over TOWARDS THE LEXUS and then McBitchface comes out and huffs around and leaves her Poison Pen Letter.

(I should explain that the windows of our living room are DIRECTLY ABOVE these parking spaces and if you're in the living room you basically see and hear everything that happens out there. It's not like she's sitting in the window spying on the neighborhood. Not that she wouldn't do that, but I don't think she was.)

WAIT IT GETS BETTER. As she is recounting this tale of False Accusation to me, LEXUS SUV OWNER WALKS UP AND READS THE NOTE AND STARTS INSPECTING THE SCENE OUTSIDE. She looks exactly like what you imagine when you hear "Lexus SUV owner." ANYWAY, I shove my sister out the door to right this injustice and volunteer to be a witness because anything that will fuck McBitchface is good with me. And the first thing Lexus says is "I DIDN'T HIT YOUR SCOOTER!!!!!!" and my sister is like "Chill, lady, not my scooter," and tells her the whole story and everything. JUSTICE WILL BE SERVED BITCH.

Doesn't look extremely likely at this point. The D-backs have been playing pretty well and both the Pirates and Dodgers are crappy. Unlikely.

2. Giants win 5 of last 9 games; Braves get swept by Phillies, lose once to Nationals, once to Marlins.

Possible! Unless the Phillies are just phoning it in at this point and waiting around for the playoffs.

3. D-backs team plane crashes attempting difficult maneuver at air show. Giants become NL West leader and win division easily.

Hard to say without knowing a littler more about the D-backs team charter pilot. A reckless iconoclast with a score to settle, or a go-along-to-get-along corporate drone? Check the glint in his/her eye next time they're boarding.

4. D-backs ownership group replaces players with illegal immigrants to increase profits. Since enforcement of tough Arizona immigration law is currently barred by injunction, no one notices.

Lyle Overbay heard darkly muttering about how they're "stealing our jobs;" dismissed as a right-wing crank; goes on a shooting spree. Meanwhile, Immigrant Diamondbacks put up heroic effort by lose NL West by one game when someone in stands shouts "La Migra!" on last day of season.

5. Larry Ellison purchases Major League Baseball; awards NL West to Giants after renaming them the "Oracle Larry Ellisons;" misplaces Diamondbacks and can't find them.

"They were right here. I swear to God. Honey, have you seen the Arizona Diamondbacks? No, Diamondbacks. Yeah, like the snake. I coulda sworn I set them down in San Diego and now I can't find them anywhere. No, they're not on my head. Yes, I looked in the glove compartment."

Friday, September 16, 2011

[ED. NOTE: Today's post is also featured on San Francisco Treats, which is a much nicer blog than what I have going on here. But they asked me to write something and so I did.]

[ED. NOTE PART TWO: It may not be posted there yet, but I'm sure it will be soon.]

Food trucks!!! They’re the black chunky glasses of mid to late 2011! If you don’t own one, you want to. If you don’t eat at one, you’re hopelessly out of touch. FOOD TRUCKS FOOD TRUCKS FOOD TRUCKS. In 10 years, people are going to be like “What was up with the fascination with eating bacon and waffle things on Acme artisanal bread from an idling vehicle in a parking lot? SO WEIRD. Also, I need the hoverboard tonight. I’m going to a Re-Elect Ashton Kutcher for President rally at the oxygen farm.”

NEVERTHELESS, I am a slave to fashion and thus a dedicated food truck aficiondo, by which I mean there are 4 or 5 that appear within 3 blocks of my office every Friday and now it’s like A Thing with me and my coworkers to go.

Today’s lineup at Off the Grid – Civic Center was the usual lineup:

Ebbett’s Good to Go – Fancy-shmacy sandwichesCurry Up Now – Indian, duh. BLAZINGLY PAINFULLY HOT Indian, I should sayLiba Falafel – What do you think?HapaSF – “Modern organic Filipino cuisine,” according to the website. I’ve never gone to this one so I’ll take their word for itCrème Brulee Cart – Man, you guys are phoning it in with the names. It’s supposed to be a funny name! How about “Crème Bru-WAY Cart!!!” or “Crème OKAY Cart!!” “Crème Lisa Bonet Cart!!!”??? THINK ABOUT IT AND GET BACK TO ME.

But enough about me. Let’s talk about food. I wasn’t sure what I was going to get today. Then I was advised that Ebbett’s had a muffaletta today. MUFFALETTA. In case you don’t know and thus by definition have been living an empty and sad husk of a life, a muffaletta is a New Orleans-birthed sandwich that usually features ham of some kind, mortadella, salami, provolone and maybe mozzarella too. Now, all that sounds good, but then it’s topped with olive tapenade, which is the money shot of a muffaletta. Olive tapenade is the Stunt Casting of sandwiches. It makes the muffaletta.

So I go down there and order the muffaletta. The girl who makes the sandwiches says “I made you an extra big one” because that’s the effect I have on women and also I was wearing my Noted Local Blogger smock. Then I ate it.

It was good. The bread was nice and soft, almost focaccia-like, or maybe it was focaccia, which, strictly speaking, isn’t what a muffaletta is supposed to be on but we’ll let it slide. It had the appropriate meats and cheeses. And the olive tapenade was solid.

So, good sandwich! I think it was 9 bucks. Don’t think that Food Truck food is extra-cheap or anything because it isn’t. It actually tends to be pretty steep. But that’s cool. It’s worth it.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

I know it's like an iconic show and all, but I was a guy in his 20's when it was on. I mean, come on, that would be kinda weird if I watched it. It would still be kinda weird. Claire Danes was super hot in Igby Goes Down, though.

2. Bones

Come on. I think I saw 5 or 6 minutes once and I was like "What the fuck?"

3. The Beverly Hillbillies

Even when I was like 6 years old I could tell this was dumber than a box of rocks and not funny at all.

4. Battlestar Galactica

The remake, not the original. I was a kid when the original was on and I think I was pretty into it. It was pretty much straight-up scif-fi. The remake is all Very Serious Allegory, right?

5. Criminal Minds

I don't even know what this is supposed to be about. I was just looking at a list of top rated TV shows and this was on it and I was like "What's that?"

6. Saved by the Bell

I don't think I even knew this show existed until it started seeping into the cultural group consciousness (there's a word for that, right? Something Jungian? I forget) and it was on during a time when I didn't watch much TV and I probably wouldn't have watched it anyway.

7. Dr. Who

This is like some serious sci-fi fanboy shit, right? Never saw it. Don't know the first thing about it. Does it involve time travel in some way?

8. Any show that starts "Real Housewives of"

Just doesn't seem like my thing.

9. Grey's Anatomy

How many medical dramas will there be? Haven't we played out every possible angle? (NB: If you want to see a GREAT hour of medical drama, check out the episode of ER that Quentin Tarantino directed. It's awesome. It's probably streaming on Netflix or some shit.)

Monday, September 12, 2011

Despite the fact that I have no facial hair and a BMI solidly within normal range, yesterday I joined the ranks of Dudes Who Brew Beer At Home. Surprisingly enough, I enjoyed the brewing process (well, Stage 1 of it, anyway). "Surprising" because I don't really like anything.

I'm not going to break down the whole 4-hour process into what I did because that would be boring. Basically, it involves a lot of boiling things and then cooling things off and then boiling something else and then cooling that off and then pouring yeast into it. It's more difficult than making Top Ramen and less difficult than making chili. It does make your house smell strongly beer-y, for lack of a better word. Not really like beer, but like something related to beer. It's this sort of fetid, yeast-y, agricultural smell. Also, hops smell a lot like marijuana. This must be the reason that so many homebrew guys are probably also big stoners. (The guy who taught the beer-making class I went to acknowledged this reality on several occasions.) I can also say that the process felt vaguely medieval. I can easily see a monk in 1358 doing pretty much the same thing I did, except over an open fire instead of a Kenmore stovetop and also probably not while occasionally checking in on the 49ers.

I ended up with 5 gallons of a dark brown liquid. It is now in the Primary Fermenter, which sounds complicated but which is actually a 5-gallon bucket with an airlock on the top, which is actually a bendy plastic tube that lets gasses out but doesn't let anything floating around in. Every few minutes, the Primary Fermenter makes a reverse-burping sound and, I suppose, gasses come out, although you can't smell anything.

Saturday we do the First Racking, which means we pour the stuff out of the Primary Fermenter and into the Secondary Fermenter, which is a big glass jug. We should have beer ready to drink in like a month. I'll keep you posted.

If this goes well, I'm going to start distilling my own whiskey at home. Maybe I'll grow some tobacco too. And opium poppies can't be that hard to grow, right? Never mind. Disregard that. I never said that.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Man, do I ever love the Chronicle's Union Squared feature. If you're not familiar, they're little stories about couples who are getting married or just got married or whatever. It has, like, how they met - which is usually some way PRETTY FUCKING CUTE - and what their wedding was like and all that stuff. Like, here's an excerpt from this week's example, Megan and Tyler (quick context: both are Stanford grads):

Although Stanford is a backdrop throughout Heinen and Mobley's love story, they did not start dating there. In fact, they met the night of a formal dance on campus, and Heinen had another date. It wasn't until two years later, when both had graduated and moved to San Francisco, that they ran into each other repeatedly while bar-hopping one night in the Marina.

"At the last bar, he left," Heinen said. "And then he came back in to get my number."

See? Cute! They met (or re-met) bar-hopping in the Marina! I'm not even going to say anything mean. You're already thinking it for me. Why do I have to do all the work?

SO that's all great and stuff but what I really want to see is a weekly column about Relationships That Didn't Work Out, you know, like the Normal Relationships Everyone Has. We'll call it either Dolores Parked or Mission Failed. It'll be like this:

Daniel and Juliana met at happy hour at Casanova. "I was totally just there to get free drinks from the bartender, who I used to bang, and make fun of the crowd, but Daniel was actually kinda cool," Juliana remembers. "So we did some key bumps in the bathroom and then later went to this super lame house party, but it was cool because we had some pints of J&B and the music didn't completely suck."

After some fumbling, unprotected sex, the newly-minted couple stopped at Walgreens the next morning for Plan B before enjoying a leisurely brunch and bottomless mimosas. The next few weeks, Daniel happily recounts, passed in a dreamy blur of taquerias, Netflix, and artisanal cocktails. And more sex, but with more condoms and less blackouts.

Oh, but fate, it seemed, would intervene: Juliana got a job writing copy for an agency in LA. "I mean, duh, I had been making like ten bucks an hour temping, so it was a total no-brainer," she recounts. Daniel, after asking who was getting her apartment, bid her a bittersweet farewell. "She was a cool enough chick, I guess," he muses now.

Juliana is happy in LA and, after being shown a picture of Daniel and reminded who he is, offers that she has nothing but warm thoughts about him. For his part, Daniel is now seeing his coworker's roommate. "I still kinda wish I had gotten her apartment," he reflects on Juliana. Love can hurt, it is true.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

The very nice bouncer, who didn't size up my wardrobe or pat me down in search of concealed weapons, informed me that this has started happening on busy weekends lately in response to the fire marshal enforcing capacity limits. He acknowledged the whole situation was "kinda embarrassing." Why? "Because, you know, we're a grocery store."

Anyway, if you can get over the public shaming of patiently and nonchalantly standing behind a red rope for organic peaches and cruelty-free cheeses, Monday afternoon's line was only 2 minutes and 34 seconds long (I timed it, for journalism) and you're treated to a sampling of free tomatoes once you make it to the top of the list.

God, it is becoming SO FUCKING HARD to make fun of anything in San Francisco any more because it ALL MAKES FUN OF ITS FUCKING SELF. How am I supposed to go on as a Relevant Local Lifestyle Critic/Angry Satirist when there are people who *WAIT* *IN* *LINE* *TO* *GET* *INTO* *A* *GROCERY* STORE*????!!!??!!!!!

The following things blew my mind about this story:

1. People will apparently wait in line to enter a FUCKING GROCERY STORE2. Ummmm, I think that's it. Just that people will wait in line to go to a grocery store.

Seriously, my troubles with waiting for anything are well-documented. If I needed emergency gall-bladder surgery and they said "Sure, we can help you, just put your name on the list and we'll call you when your operating theater is ready," I'd be like, "Nah, it's OK, thanks, I'll self-medicate with Naproxen and shots of Fernet and come back some other time." So the very idea that people who appear to be otherwise Rational and Sane Adults (some of whom may, in fact, have kinda nice legs, but the photo's a little blurry) would stand behind a velvet rope to be admitted into a place to buy Artisanal Sandwiches or Herbesde Provence is mind-boggling to me.

(The comments section should also finally put to rest the stubbornly longstanding SF Urban Legend that Burning Man somehow clears the city [and specifically the Mission] out on Labor Day Weekend. I've been trying to debunk that bullshit for years.)

(I realize this post is basically just an extended comment on an Uptown Almanac post, so I would like to thank the staff of Uptown Almanac for letting me basically steal their material and run with it. If I could fit this entire Rage-O-Gram into a tweet, I would have.)

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Slightly hungover and just wanting to get out of the house, a few of us went to see the new Paul Rudd vehicle "Our Idiot Brother" yesterday. The film, which is as bland and inoffensive as mayonnaise, is interesting in that I can't figure out why it was made. I mean, someone had to champion this film, right? They had to walk the script around LA and have pitch meetings and go home and think "Man!!! I think I'm really close!" And then you get this wallpaper paste of a movie that isn't angry-making like an Adam Sandler movie but isn't interesting or even funny. There are episodes - maybe almost every episode - of "Parks and Recreation" that are funnier than this movie.

I mean, one of the major jokes - SPOILER ALERT, I guess, if you're hell-bent on wasting $10.75 to see this - is that Paul Rudd's dog is named "Willie Nelson." Hilarious, right? The dog is a major part of the movie, and no one passes up and opportunity to say the dog's name. A dog named after a real person! I'm gasping for breath! THAT IS SO FUNNY!!!!

(Plus, this gave the producers a reason to put a bunch of Willie Nelson - the musician (or "musician," I could say), not the dog - on the soundtrack. I fucking hate Willie Nelson. Like nails on a chalkboard. That voice. So I would say the repeated Willie Nelson songs did nothing to enhance my enjoyment.)

The basic plot is that Paul Rudd's character gets out of prison and then ruins the lives of his sisters in one way or another. I got the impression that he's supposed to be one of those Magical Innocent character types who's the only one who can tell people the truth, but whatever, I didn't really care enough to think about it. I just kept going back to Why did this movie get made?

Here's what I hope happened: It was originally a much, much darker comedy called "Our Sociopathic Brother" in which Paul Rudd gets out of jail and then decides to WREAK HAVOC on all those who have wronged him. He returns to his sisters' homes and kills them and their families and burns their houses down before dying in a hail of gunfire. Then this script was progressively watered down by one studio exec after another until we have what's left. Anyway, with all these fine actors and all this money, it's curious that no one thought to make a better movie.

One of the people who went with us took a klonopin and seemed to like it better than me, so if you have to see it, I recommend taking a klonopin first.

Friday, September 2, 2011

If you're like me (and there is almost no chance of this, I realize that, it's just an expression), on your daily perambulations through the City, you encounter a variety of panhandlers, homeless and otherwise. As with most things in my life, I'm often perplexed about how to handle this fraught situation and so I'm croudsourcing this issue to find out what it is you do.

As I work in the Civic Center area, which is part of/maybe just immediately adjacent the Tenderloin, I see some of the same panhandlers every day.

There is the oddly well-put-together woman who I've written about before who posts up at the corner of Grove and Larkin during commute hours (she's there roughly 7:30-9 am and then 4 to about 6 pm) silently holding a sheaf of Street Sheets and who doesn't look homeless or even really troubled in any way; in fact, she would not be out of place waiting on you in a diner or something. NOT HOLDING THAT AGAINST HER; I'm just saying, it's kinda weird.

(I wrote that prior post about her in 2009. She's still out there, basically every day. I continue to be really curious about what her deal is but I really don't want to stop and talk to her because I pass her every day, usually twice a day, and I don't want to set up a thing where I have to stop and talk to her every day. It has nothing to do with her being homeless; I don't want to stop and talk to anyone twice a day. I'm not one of those people who hangs around their corner store trading neighborhood gossip or that kind of thing.)

(OH SNAP I just looked at the Google Street View for Grove & Larkin and thought I saw her but it's just some chick with a coffee. Goes to show how normal she looks.)

There's the Bearded Disheveled Guy Who's Always Reading a Paperback Book. He can be found in Civic Center Station pretty much all the time. I've actually given him money before.

There's a whole crowd that hangs out around the Main Library. One of them is a guy who wears Rollerblades all the time and skates around passing a football back and forth with one of his comrades. In all fairness, I've never seen him ask anyone for money, so maybe he just likes to wear Rollerblades and throw the rock around and hang out by the library.

UNRELATED: Check out the cool Street View Dog on the corner of Larkin and Golden Gate! AWWWWW, PUPPY!!!!

And so on. My point is, when you see your Regular Panhandlers, what do you do? Do you give them money?

Or I guess, what are your usual Giving Money to Panhandler Rules? I mean, in SF, you probably get hit up for money 5 to 12 times a day unless you're Richie Rich and live in Pacific Heights and drive your Volvo to work and your secretary brings lunch to you. So what are your giving money rules? When do you toss a buck at a panhandler?

(RELATED STORY - I remember reading somewhere years ago about an invitation to some fancy-ass party in a part of town where there were obviously panhandlers and the invitation asked guests to not give money to the "outdoorsmen." Outdoorsmen! FAVORITE HOMELESS EUPHEMISM.)

Have a nice holiday weekend at Burning Man or whatever it is you do. I guess if you're at Burning Man you're not reading this anyway.

Also, I'm still on jury duty but hopefully only for another week and then everything will be back to normal.

Also, we're trying out Boxing Room tonight and I'll totally tell you if it's good or what. Smoked Chicken & Andouille Gumbo! FUCK YEAH. Speaking of restaurant websites, THANK YOU FOR NOT AUTOPLAYING DIXIELAND JAZZ ON YOUR WEBSITE BOXING ROOM. I KNOW THAT MUST HAVE BEEN NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO RESIST.

About Me

TK lives and works in San Francisco. He occasionally travels to places east of the Caldecott Tunnel, but not very often. His interests include bars, reality TV, and irony. Things seem to be going fine.